This is your time of year: your vacation. You're on the flats, fly rod in hand, finally. The tarpon is sixty feet away. Something electric - perhaps a primitive instinct - surges through you, turning on your long-held dream of hitting the fly-fishing grand slam. You lift the line off the water, cast back and then forward. The wind howls, and in your mind you hear a coyote, but then you remember you're nowhere near the woods. You look ahead and over the water you see your beautifully shaped, but somewhat wide, loop blown out of shape. Your line crashes down, well short of your quest. Reality left hooks your dream. Your guide says, "Use this."

He holds a spinning rod. You think, Isn't a spinning rod cheating? What will I tell my friends? That I played it safe and stopped at third base? I'm supposed to be a fly fisher, for better or worse, aren't I?

Yes. Then why not for the better? Why not learn the double haul and how to turn your casting loops into tight wind-piercing-like arrows?

It's easier than you think.

LET ME EXPLAIN. I'll begin by asking: What is a haul?

Simply put, it is casting a fly rod with one hand and, once we begin the power snap, simultaneously pulling down the line with our other hand, and increasing the line tension on the rod tip, and therefore bending (loading) the rod more so that when we abruptly stop the rod at the end of the cast, the tip recoils faster and across a longer arc.

To take this definition even further: The haul is, in a sense, a reflection of our power snap.

And what is a power snap?

I'll define it as the second part of the casting stroke. In the first part, the loading move, we slowly accelerate the rod. In the second part, the power snap, we break our wrist, though not on the back cast, and rapidly increase acceleration, reaching maximum speed at the end of our casting stroke.

Let me digress: It is a well-known principal of fly casting that if we want to increase the length of our cast, we must also increase the length and acceleration of our loading move, and then also of our haul.

(If you ever watch a long-distance tournament fly caster you'll see that during his or her power snap they move their hauling hand faster and longer than their rod hand.)

HOW LONG AND FAST? The more line we’re casting—usually about 35 feet— the longer and faster we must haul. In general, if we properly accelerate our fly rod, but our line forms a wide loop, we hauled too slowly. If, on the other hand, our line forms a tailing loop, we hauled too quickly or too early. But what if we’re castingheavy flies? Many casters don’t increase theirhauling acceleration. In fact, they actually slowit down as they believe that forming a wideloop will help prevent a weighted fly fromhitting the rod tip. This is probably true, buta wide loop limits our casting distance. Be-sides, in my opinion, if a cast is executedcorrectly, a weighted fly will not hit the rodtip; so, for maximum distance, I increase mycasting and hauling accelerationwhen castinga weighted fly. How much doI increase myacceleration? As much as possible, as long asmy loop doesn’t tail and/ormy fly doesn’tbounce at the end of the cast.

HOW DO WE HAUL? When false casting, weexecute most of our downward hauls at anangle of about 60 degrees to the water, andwe finish our hauls with our line hand pointing to about eight o’clock. If we want to increase the length of our back-cast haul we’ll have to haul at a steeper angle. Also, we might have to generate additional power by snapping our line hand down at the end of our haul.

On our downward forward false-cast hauls, depending on how much line we have out, we’ll finish our haul with our line hand pointing to between 8 or even 6 o’clock. On our presentation casts, we’ll accelerate our haul as fast as possible, and finish with our line hand behind our front thigh.

To help increase my presentation-cast acceleration, I like to pretend that, instead of hauling, I’m holding a football upside down and throwing it behind me as far as I can.

But when do we start our haul? Some casters start their downward haul when they’re executing their loading move. I, however, like to haul late, as this will help prevent tailing loops, and will also allow me to shorten my hauls without losing power. (Shorter hauls, as we’ll soon see, make it easier for us to execute our upward hauls without adding slack to the line.) So, I begin my downward haul when I begin my power snap. During our back-cast loading move, we keep our line hand level with our rod hand and move both backwards. When our rod butt points to about 12 o’clock, we begin our downward haul. (Moving both hands backward will seem difficult at first, but with a little practice it will become second nature.) During our forward-cast loading move, we also move both hands forward. When our rod butt points to about 11:30, and our casting arm is extended about halfway, we begin our downward haul.

We increase our hauling acceleration faster than our casting acceleration. Abruptly, we stop our haul and our fly rod at the same time. (To help me do this, I like to visualize a loose rope connecting my rod and line hands. When I stop my fly rod I imagine the rope completely tightening and stopping my hands.)

But what if we continue our downward haul after we stop the rod?It will make it very difficult for us to execute our upward haul without adding slack.

(See below.)

So now you have it, the basics of the long double haul.

WHAT WENT WRONG? The answer probably is that when we executed our upward haul and gave line back.

As soon as we finish our long downward haul we must immediately give line back at the same speed the line is unrolling. If we give line back too quickly—sometimes to compensate for stopping our downward haul too late—we won’t feel tension on the line, and we’ll add slack and weaken our cast.

But supposing we give line back too slowly,and we don’t get our line hand up to our rodhand before we begin our next cast?

We’ll probably commit one of two serious,casting defects: 1. We begin our cast bymoving our rod hand before or faster thanwe move our line hand, and we thereforelose all line tension on the rod tip. Theresult: The rod doesn’t fully load, and ourcast is under powered and maybe evencollapses. Oh, the embarrassment! 2. Webegin the cast with our line hand belowour rod hand, and we manage to move bothhands in-sync, and maintain line tension, butbecause we started our haul with our line handtoo low, we run out of hauling room, especially when we execute our presentation cast. Again our cast collapses.

To help get our line hand up to our rod hand, it’s important to remember that if we shoot line, we should simultaneously slide our line hand upward.

If we’re false casting into the wind, and we cannot execute our upward hauls without adding slack, we should start our downward hauls later in the casting stroke, after we begin our power snap. That way, our downward and upward hauls will be shorter.

GETTING THE LINE TANGLED AROUND THE ROD BUTT. This is a common problem when executing a long upward haul. To solve this we should begin our upward haul by moving our line hand up and away from our body.

FINALLY, THE REAL SECRET. To become a great hauler we should practice throwing a ball with our hauling hand.

And so for as long as we fish we'll probably wish for less wind and closer fish, but now we won't have to wish as much, because in our double haul we'll thankfully see its defects: wide loops, tailing loops - loops that will reflect cures and help us become our own hauling doctors; so that the next time we're on the flats and see a tarpon we'll round third and head for home.

Copyright 2007 by Randall Kadish. All rights reserved.

This article was published in Nor'east Saltwater and in Fishing Facts Magazine.